Bargo sentenced to death

Michael Bargo was sentenced to death Friday morning for his role in the 2011 slaying of 15-year-old Seath Jackson.

By April WarrenStaff writer

Michael Bargo Jr. will pay for the life he took with his own.

“The death penalty is not only justified, it is the only appropriate sentence based on the evidence and the law of the state of Florida,” Circuit Judge David Eddy said Friday during the sentencing hearing. He called this the most cold, calculated and premeditated case of murder he has seen in his 32 years as a member of the Florida Bar.

In August a 12-member jury recommended death by a vote of 10-2 and the judge legally must give their decision great weight, but ultimately has the final word.

Friday’s death sentence solidifies the 21-year-old’s new place as the youngest of 404 inmates currently on Florida’s death row.

The verdict also wraps up the most grisly murder case Marion County has seen in recent years. It claimed the life of 15-year-old Seath Jackson and sent four young people — Amber Wright, 17; Kyle Hooper, 19; Charlie Kay Ely, 21; and Justin Soto, 22 — to prison for the rest of their lives, leaving many families, including the victim’s, permanently torn apart.

The state sought the death penalty for Bargo, the triggerman and mastermind behind the horrific murder plot.

On April 17, 2011, five teenagers lured Seath, 15, to a Summerfield residence where they beat, shot and tortured him, before burning his body in a backyard fire pit. The group then placed the remains in three five-gallon paint buckets and dumped them at the bottom of a limerock pit.

During the trial the state presented evidence that a feud between Bargo and Seath erupted over Wright, while the defense contended that a lack of parental supervision caused neighborhood bullying to continue unaddressed.

Bargo remained composed during the hearing, but one of his family members broke out in sobs upon hearing the judge’s decision. Seath’s family, who has had to endure the repeated retelling of their son’s death, did not attend the highly publicized hearing.

While bailiffs led Bargo out of the courtroom in handcuffs, Michael Bargo Sr. called out “I love you, son.”

The judge’s decision also continues a startling trend: Of the now eight individuals from Marion County currently on death row, seven were sentenced in their 20s — and more than half, including Bargo, were in the 21-23 age range. The average age for executed inmates at the time of offense is about 30, according to the Department of Corrections, making Marion County’s convicted murderers younger than the average death row inmate.

“I think that is a scary trend,” said defense attorney Candace Hawthorne, who represented Bargo and two other defendants in their 20s currently on death row.

Hawthorne pointed to evidence presented during Bargo’s trial regarding adolescent brain development. While society uses 18 as the cutoff age for adulthood, she calls the number arbitrary and says science proves the brain is not fully developed until age 25.

Evidence presented during Bargo’s trial suggests adolescent brains operate on a more immature level than a fully developed brain, and therefore younger individuals are susceptible to higher emotional levels and have less ability to control impulses and handle stressors.

However, at trial no expert testimony supported the notion that Bargo couldn’t help but kill Seath.

“It’s a Machiavellian tragedy,” said Hawthorne of the case. “The system failed and the parents failed.”

Bargo will now be allowed to start the appeals process — first to the Florida Supreme Court — where Hawthorne believes he might find some relief.

During the trial’s penalty phase, Assistant State Attorneys Robin Arnold and Amy Berndt argued the crime was especially cold, calculated and premeditated as well as heinous, atrocious and cruel.

Hawthorne said all murders are heinous, atrocious and cruel, and this case had no more premeditation than other murder cases.

In his 21-page sentencing order, Eddy agreed with the state. He pointed to testimony that Bargo planned the murder, directed his co-defendants’ actions, and ordered the victim to be placed in a bathtub while still alive, where Bargo shot him in the face, ultimately causing his death.

“The actions of the defendant were conscienceless and exemplified an extreme desire to inflict a high degree of pain, fear and terror in the victim,” Eddy wrote.

He also gave great weight to the second aggravating factor. Eddy referenced Bargo’s careful planning of when to light the backyard fire where Seath’s body would eventually be burned. His actions were not only calm and careful but exhibited a degree of deliberate ruthlessness and failure to provide a legal defense for the murder, the judge found.

“I’m not crazy, I’m not a psycho, I’m not a bad person,” Bargo told the Ocala Star-Banner during a recent jailhouse interview. He described himself as non-confrontational and unaggressive and still maintains his innocence in the ordeal, calling co-defendant Hooper the real shooter.

“I am not surprised by the judge’s decision,” Hawthorne said after the hearing Friday. “I think he (Eddy) has a lot of pressure locally to give the sentence that he did.”

As for the three statutory mitigating circumstances offered by the defense — Bargo was under extreme mental or emotional disturbance at the time of the crime, his inability to appreciate the criminality of his conduct and lastly, his age — Eddy was only reasonably convinced by two and awarded them slight weight, discounting Bargo’s inability to appreciate the criminality of the conduct.

Eddy found evidence Bargo suffers from a biological mental illness, schizoaffective disorder, and might have a partial complex seizure spectrum disorder. But that did not rise to the level of legal justification.

According to Eddy, despite conflicting diagnosis results from both state and defense experts, all agreed Bargo’s ability to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the law was not impaired.

In addition to providing the judge with the statutory mitigators, the defense also submitted 55 non-statutory mitigators.

The judge gave six of them moderate weight, including the role of his co-defendants, and diagnoses of bipolar and schizoaffective disorder.

Eddy awarded slight weight to the partial complex seizure disorder, Bargo’s loving relationship with his father, and evidence he has had hallucinations and paranoid delusional thinking.

Thirty-one of those non-statutory mitigating factors were given little weight. They included parental abandonment, a diagnosis of attention deficient hyperactivity disorder at age 7, evidence Bargo had been a victim of childhood bullying, and his engagement in self-mutilation.

Five were give no weight at all, including the fact that Bargo did not act alone in murdering Seath and the fact that he is immature.

“It is ordered that the defendant be taken by the proper authorities to the Florida State Prison, and there be kept under close confinement until the date his execution is set,” said Eddy before adjourning court.

Soon Bargo will be relocated from the Marion County Jail to where all male death row inmates are housed: either Florida State Prison in Starke or Union Correctional Institution in Raiford.

The five women in the state awaiting execution — including Marion County’s Emilia Carr — are housed at Lowell Correctional Institutional Annex.

A typical cell on death row is 6 feet by 9 feet and 9.5 feet high. Inmates are allowed to shower every other day, and while tobacco products are prohibited, inmates are allowed to have snacks, radios and 13-inch televisions in their cells, according to the Department of Corrections. Cable and air conditioning are not provided.

The average inmate stays on death row 13 years before execution, according to DOC. Prior to that time, an inmate can request a last meal, but the food to prepare that meal must cost no more than $40 and be available to purchase locally.

Bargo remains convinced he won’t be eating his last meal on death row. He has said he believes he will win his case on appeal and be released from prison in two to three years once he is allowed to tell the full story.

If that happens, his first act of business will be to leave Ocala.

“That’s what eats me up the most, I got all these people out there hating me,” he told the Star-Banner.

He has already started consulting with new counsel after visible courtroom disagreements with his current attorneys.

During trial, lead defense attorney Charles Holloman admitted to the jury his client did play some role in the murder but that some elements still remained murky and urged the panel to show clemency for his client.

“My lawyer sat there and called me a killer. It kind of threw me off guard,” said Bargo, who had not given his permission for his attorney to use such a tactic.

He wanted his defense to revolve around his version of events, where he was not even at the home during the commission of the murder. This is the same story he told the jury himself while testifying for an excess of 2½ hours.

However, his testimony took a narrative format without any assistance from counsel. According to one expert, there is a legal reason for that.

“If the attorney refuses to examine the defendant on the stand, which is assisting him, then the attorney signals to the judge and the jury that the defendant is lying,” wrote attorney Jack Marshall in his blog Ethicsalarms.com. Marshall is president of ProEthics Ltd., an ethics training and consulting firm in Alexandria, Va.

If Bargo is never released from prison, Eddy’s final words to the young defendant might be what he needs most in the end:

“May God have mercy on your soul.”

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